The Museum of Modern Love

Heather Rose

This book can be downloaded and read in iBooks on your Mac or iOS device.

Description

Winner of the 2017 Stella Prize.

'This is a weirdly beautiful book.' David Walsh founder and curator, MONA

'Life beats down and crushes the soul, and art reminds you that you have one.' Stella Adler

'Art will wake you up. Art will break your heart. There will be glorious days. If you want eternity you must be fearless.' From The Museum of Modern Love

She watched as the final hours of The Artist is Present passed by, sitter after sitter in a gaze with the woman across the table. Jane felt she had witnessed a thing of inexplicable beauty among humans who had been drawn to this art and had found the reflection of a great mystery. What are we? How should we live?If this was a dream, then he wanted to know when it would end. Maybe it would end if he went to see Lydia. But it was the one thing he was not allowed to do.

Arky Levin is a film composer in New York separated from his wife, who has asked him to keep one devastating promise. One day he finds his way to The Atrium at MOMA and sees Marina Abramovic in The Artist is Present. The performance continues for seventy-five days and, as it unfolds, so does Arky. As he watches and meets other people drawn to the exhibit, he slowly starts to understand what might be missing in his life and what he must do.

This dazzlingly original novel asks beguiling questions about the nature of art, life and love and finds a way to answer them.

Customer Reviews

Captivating

by
Disterjenny

Not a book to rush through in one sitting, the prose is like music, to be lingered over and savoured. Rose provokes the reader to explore their own meaning of life and art. Initially I found the portrayal of, performance artist, Marina Abramovic as self absorbed and superior, but her humanity is gradually revealed, as if the sitting was humbling and lead her to release people from her proscribed rules for living to find their own path.